Work Play and Classtime

I'm starting to have a little fun again with my work, now that I'm calmer.
I'd been putting pressure on myself to find a new job immediately, but there's no need. I'll keep actively looking, but I don't need to jump out of one frying pan into another.

This week I nabbed a donated letter board and used it for my Cool Old Books section:

Photographing for the store's social media can be perfunctory, which is a bore, or it can be a real artistic challenge, which is enlivening.

Clothes especially challenge me because I don't care about fashion & labels. So I have to figure out, How can I make a piece of clothing interesting, intrinsically, as an object?
No one is willing to model the clothes for me, so it can't be about the body.
That leaves... the way light on fabric picks out color and textures.

I LOVE this photo I took last week:

Here's another amazing donation--a vintage photo of a Black man. There's absolutely no information of any kind on it--no name, place, date.
Here's where I'd like to know more about fashion. By the man's hair and tie, I'd guess maybe 1920s?

Hm... or earlier? Here's African American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux (Wikipedia) in similar fashion via , c. 1913:

 

Ass't Man has been leaving me alone, and that's perfect.
Last summer I'd hoped we might be able to collaborate.
Now I'm aiming for mutual toleration.

Negotiating with Eggplants

Have you been seeing ads for MasterClass offerings?
They keep popping up on my FB--probably because I've watched a couple of them.
"High-end tutorials by celebrity teachers", they look like TED talks, and if the classes were free, I'd watch some of them.
An Atlantic article calls the classes "bonbons. . . . Yet, after watching Gordon Ramsay do it, I did finally learn how to properly salt an eggplant."

It never occurred to me to pay for one though, until today I saw an ad for
a negotiation class with former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss.

Reading an article about hostage negotiation had been key to me defusing tensions with Ass't Man last summer.
SO HELPFUL!!!
"Raise their oxytocin level" the article said, by creating a social bond. You don't have to like the person for this to work.

I could have watched all of Voss's videos on youTube for free.  MasterClass has even posted a free hour-long one there.
But I decided to sign up for the yearlong pass to all their classes because honestly, lots of them do appeal to me––Voss's as an actual class––I want to study and learn more about negotiations (lots of interactions are negotiations, not just hostile encounters with management);
others, maybe more for social curiosity:
What's Neil Gaiman like when he's talking about writing?
(Bonus if it's actually helpful or inspirational to me.)

It's a long, dark winter--why not indulge in bonbons?

Also, I'd like to know, how do you properly salt an eggplant?